Cornwall installs world's largest wave energy site

Off the coast of Cornwall, close to St Ives, a behemoth lurks beneath the waves. It's called Wave Hub, and it's the largest wave energy project in the world, comprising of multiple different energy generation devices with their own turbine arrays.

Each device is connected to the central hub by cable, and from there to a substation at a local village called Hayle, where it's connected up to the national grid. The idea is to provide a "socket" on the sea bed where previously-tested devices can prove their commercial worth by generating useful quantities of electricity, which the developers are paid for.

The hub can take up to four devices at once, with a initial capacity of 11 kv that'll ramp up to 33 kv once suitable connectors are developed. The devices are moored within an eight square kilometre area of the sea bed which is fenced off with navigational markers so that ships don't run into them.

The whole project has cost £42 million, with about about £10 million coming from the UK government. It's planned to become operational in 2011, and Ocean Power Technologies is already signed up to take part. Other companies haven't yet been confirmed, but Fred Olsen Ltd, WestWave and Oceanlinx are said to be interested.

Stephen Peacock from the South West Regional Development Agency, who also helped to fund the project, told Inhabitat: "This milestone is the culmination of more than six years’ work by the RDA and its partners and will catapult south-west England and the UK to the forefront of wave energy development. Our aim is to create an entirely new low-carbon industry in the south west and hundreds of quality jobs."

Wave Hub's general manager, Guy Lavender, added: "Seeing Wave Hub lowered into the water was the culmination of more than seven years’ hard work by hundreds of people and the fact that it was designed and built in this country is testimony to the skills and experience that the UK already has in the fledgling marine renewables industry."

Comments

Wave energy is produced when electricity generators are placed on the surface of the ocean. The energy provided is most often used in desalination plants, power plants and water pumps. Energy output is determined by wave height, wave speed, wavelength, and water density. To date there are only a handful of experimental wave generator plants in operation around the world. As such a large wave power plant will kindle interest in large scale exploitation of Wave or Tidal Energy.Tidal power, also called tidal energy, is a form of hydropower that converts the energy of tides into electricity or other useful forms of power. The first large-scale tidal power plant (the Rance Tidal Power Station) started operation in 1966.Although not yet widely used, tidal power has potential for future electricity generation. Tides are more predictable than wind energy and solar power. Among sources of renewable energy, tidal power has traditionally suffered from relatively high cost and limited availability of sites with sufficiently high tidal ranges or flow velocities, thus constricting its total availability. However, many recent technological developments and improvements, both in design (e.g. dynamic tidal power, tidal lagoons) and turbine technology (e.g. new axial turbines, crossflow turbines), indicate that the total availability of tidal power may be much higher than previously assumed, and that economic and environmental costs may be brought down to competitive levels.Historically, tide mills have been used, both in Europe and on the Atlantic coast of North America. The earliest occurrences date from the Middle Ages, or even from Roman times. List of tidal power stations•The first tidal power station was the Rance tidal power plant built over a period of 6 years from 1960 to 1966 at La Rance, France. It has 240 MW installed capacity. •The first tidal power site in North America is the Annapolis Royal Generating Station, Annapolis Royal, Nova Scotia, which opened in 1984 on an inlet of the Bay of Fundy. It has 20 MW installed capacity. •The Jiangxia Tidal Power Station, south of Hangzhou in China has been operational since 1985, with current installed capacity of 3.2 MW. More tidal power is planned near the mouth of the Yalu River. •The first in-stream tidal current generator in North America (Race Rocks Tidal Power Demonstration Project) was installed at Race Rocks on southern Vancouver Island in September 2006. The next phase in the development of this tidal current generator will be in Nova Scotia. •A small project was built by the Soviet Union at Kislaya Guba on the Barents Sea. It has 0.4 MW installed capacity. In 2006 it was upgraded with a 1.2MW experimental advanced orthogonal turbine. •Jindo Uldolmok Tidal Power Plant in South Korea is a tidal stream generation scheme planned to be expanded progressively to 90 MW of capacity by 2013. The first 1 MW was installed in May 2009. •A 1.2 MW SeaGen system became operational in late 2008 on Strangford Lough in Northern Ireland. •254 MW Sihwa Lake Tidal Power Plant in South Korea is under construction and planned to be completed by the end of 2010. •The contract for an 812 MW tidal barrage near Ganghwa Island north-west of Incheon has been signed by Daewoo. Completion is planned for 2015. •A 1,320 MW barrage built around islands west of Incheon is proposed by the Korean government, with projected construction start in 2017. •Other South Korean projects include barrages planned for Garorim Bay, Ansanman, and Swaseongho, and tidal generation associated with the Saemangeum reclamation project. The barrages are all in the multiple-hundred megawatts range. •The Indian state of Gujarat is planning to host South Asia's first commercial-scale tidal power station. The company Atlantis Resources is to install a 50MW tidal farm in the Gulf of Kutch on India's west coast, with construction starting early in 2012. •Estimates for new tidal barrages in England give the potential generation at 5.6GW mean power(Soucr: Wikipedia)Dr.A.Jagadeesh Nellore(AP),India.